How student societies can engage with the Careers Service
Oxford undergraduate and graduate students have access to a wealth of resources to help them develop valued employability skills and experiences; two main, extra-curricular sources are the University Careers Service and the many student societies. Here are the ways in which the two could work together and provide improved services that are easy for students to navigate.
Student societies could:
- Open a CareerConnect account for the society, preferably using generic president@soc.org or secretary@soc.co.uk email addresses. The benefits might include:
- Societies can indicate which industry/sectors they serve, and then could become searchable using RSS feed linked to the Careers Service sector briefings
- Enable the Careers Service to automate emails to societies, potentially ‘by industry sector’
- Use the Careers Service vacancy platform to advertise positions – including for Committee positions, applications to programmes such as the Alpha Fund Investment training, the CapitOx Finance Academy (see below) and for applications to join consultancy teams at OSG/OSG Digital/OCI/ODC/180 Degrees/ShARE Consulting.
- Attend a careers fair for free: this would be open only to those societies with a series of careers-related events. To apply for a place, societies should send a short note describing their careers activities to fairs@careers.ox.ac.uk (unless they already have a connection with a fair)
- Add industry relevant RSS feeds to their website. This was recently showcased with the Oxford AI Society so that the Society didn’t have to create a separate jobs platform etc. Societies can add a single click link to reveal 'Vacancies'; 'Events'; 'News' tabs – there are the quick links at the bottom of the Careers Service sector briefings.
- Encourage companies to use the Careers Service’s vacancy platform, CareerConnect, to reach a bigger audience – instead of circulating vacancies themselves. Societies can highlight their favourites online and in any newsletters to provide added value to sponsors.
- Seek advice on services and impact by discussing with careers advisers from the relevant industry sector cluster. This already happens across the City industries and with some of the tech-related societies, and advisers are keen to extend their collaboration across many sectors.
- Co-host events with Careers, perhaps with Careers leading to recruit relevant speakers or company involvement, and the society helping to promote to their members and increase audience.
- Provide speakers for Careers Service panels and events, such as Ask an Intern sessions and our annual Student Panel for all our Employer Engagement Network events – an excellent way to promote the society and its work to potential student members and sponsors.
Careers Service could:
- Promote training programmes and event series, such as the Alpha Fund training session and the Oxford Guild’s summer speaker series. Outside the main Michaelmas term recruiting season, the Careers Service can promote grouped events via the News page and weekly newsletter if they offer a big enough audience.
- Promote Societies working in specific fields. Currently the Career Service circulates lists for Management Consulting societies and the Finance sector societies – these have been attached as a key resource to the Briefings, but could in future be added as an RSS feed for all societies listed on CareerConnect, to a societies webpage allowing societies a space on our website to position themselves and their activity. These could link to societies websites/term-cards/FB etc.
- Help Societies to meet potential sponsors. Careers advisers are in touch with external recruiters and alumni in all fields and will be asked about which student societies they might work with. CAs are more likely to make introductions to societies where they know their agenda or term card, have shared a platform or found students willing to work with the Careers Service eg by joining panels. This is also relevant for introductions to alumni as possible speakers, trainers and mentors and other non-financial benefits.
- Speak to society members or run advisory sessions coordinated and hosted by the society.
